Hey guys, I am Zach. Currently, I am a 22 year old junior at a small college called Fayetteville State. My current major is a BS in Psychology. Ever since I took my first psychology class, I have been hooked. However, I am kind of torn where to go after this. For the longest time, I had assumed masters degree credits took up some doctoral credits, but after talking with a friend in a PsyD program, I learned that may not be the case. I would be lying if I didn't say that I am already starting to feel a little burned out, but obviously need at least a masters to make any money.
If you're already feeling "burned out" from undergrad and you're not even finished, med school and grad school might not be a great idea right now. They are both a lot of work and can burn you out by themselves without already feeling that way from undergrad. It might be good to take a gap year or two to save some money and get a break from school, but there is also something to be said about not losing momentum by being out of school for too long. It all really depends on you as a person and what you qualifications are so far for grad school or med school.
You should read the guides in the stickied thread Wisneuro linked for more information about clinical psychology, PsyD vs PhD programs, etc.
Would you guys go for a masters in clinical counseling or just straight ahead?
What exactly do you want to do for a career? Teach? Research? Provide clinical services?
As you seem to have already been informed by your friend, master's degrees won't take off many credits for a doctoral program, though that is more dependent on the programs individually. From what I've seen, many counseling programs more commonly admit students who already have master's degrees in counseling and possibly have work experience providing counseling. I'm not sure if this means that you will be exempt from coursework or completing a master's thesis during the doctoral program. In clinical psychology, some programs will give you more credit for master's degrees than others, e.g. exempting you from more classes, but they'll still generally require that you complete another thesis in their program. Students entering clinical programs will sometimes have master's degrees from experimental psych or clinical psych programs that require empirical research-based theses. These programs allow them to get the research experience and productivity, e.g. publications and posters, while also demonstrating that they can perform well in graduate level coursework to make them competitive for admission to good programs.
Whether you should get a master's degree before going to a doctoral program is mostly dependent on what your qualifications and resume will look like by the end of undergrad. If you don't have much research experience, but have a good undergrad GPA, getting an RA job for a couple years after you graduate would probably be sufficient. If your undergrad GPA is lacking, you might want to do a master's program regardless of how much research experience you have.
Another thing, if any of you are psychiatry students. How tolerable is med school for a psych major? I took general biology and it bored the crap out of me (though I aced it), so it's safe for me to assume that it'd be four years of suck before the residency that'd actually keep me happy. Thanks though!
To get into med school, you need to take quite a few lab science courses in biology, physics, and chemistry and general bio is probably the easiest of them. The organic chemistry courses are generally the most difficult for most students and are often the point at which students reconsider going to med school.
